One is "the Finnish Flash," the other is simply a blur.
Step away from the ice, away from the crowds, the skates, sticks and pucks and you will find two very different people. The only thing Teemu Selanne and Paul Kariya of the Mighty Ducks have in common is an uncommon grace in an often brutal game.
"Teemu is so easygoing," said Colorado Avalanche winger Warren Rychel, a former Duck. "Paul is so focused, you can't talk to him sometimes.
"But when they get on the ice, it's like magic."
Selanne and Kariya have been called hockey's greatest tandem in more than a decade, drawing comparisons to Wayne Gretzky and Jari Kurri during the Edmonton Oilers' dynasty of the 1980s.
Certainly, there's no questioning their credentials as the game's next dynamic duo. Perhaps the only thing holding the speedy wingers back is the Ducks' lack of success. After all, Gretzky won four Stanley Cups and Kurri five with Edmonton.
Selanne tied Washington's Peter Bondra for the NHL lead with 52 goals last season, becoming only the fourth player in league history to score more than 25% of his team's total. It was the second consecutive season he had topped the 50-goal mark and the third time in his six-season career.
Kariya had 17 goals in only 22 games. Three-fourths of his season was wiped out, first by a contract dispute and later by post-concussion syndrome. He has scored 40 or more goals twice in his four NHL seasons.
"Everybody in the league would like to have one player like that," said Pierre Gauthier, Duck president and general manager. "We have two."
Statistics did not create this bond and do not sustain it. Friendship forged the pairing. Fact is, Kariya raved so much about Selanne after meeting him at the 1996 All-Star game, then-general manager Jack Ferreira decided to trade for him. Ferreira bamboozled the Winnipeg Jets, persuading them to give up Selanne for Oleg Tverdovsky and Chad Kilger on Feb. 7, 1996.
Neither Kariya nor Selanne--and, in fact, neither the Ducks nor the Jets, who moved to Phoenix in 1996-97--were the same after the trade.
Kariya finally had a running mate. And Selanne had someone to teach him the importance of defense. The Walt Disney Co. had two marquee names to help promote its new plaything. And the Winnipeg-Phoenix franchise has been eliminated in the first round of the playoffs three consecutive seasons since trading Selanne, once by the Ducks.
